Inquiry Concerning Political Justice by William Godwin 1793 INQUIRY CONCERNING POLITICAL JUSTICE AND ITS INFLUENCE ON MODERN MORALS AND HAPPINESS BOOK I: OF THE POWERS OF MAN CONSIDERED IN HIS SOCIAL CAPACITY CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION The object proposed in the following work is an investigation concerning that form of public or political society, that system of intercourse and reciprocal action, extending beyond the bounds of a single family, which shall be found most to conduce to the general benefit. How may the peculiar and independent operation of each individual in the social state most effectually be preserved? How may the security each man ought to possess, as to his life, and the employment of his faculties according to the dictates of his own understanding, be most certainly defended from invasion? How may the indi...
BOOK II CHAPTER IV OF PERSONAL VIRTUE AND DUTY Of virtuous action.-Of a Virtuous agent.-Capacity-in inanimate substances -in man.-Inference.-Of benevolent error.-Nature of vise.-Illustrations.-Mutability of the principle of belief.- Complexity in the operation of motives -Deduction.-Of duty.-It is never our duty to do wrong. THERE are two subjects, of the utmost importance to a just delineation of the principles of society, which are, on that account, entitled to a separate examination: the duties incumbent on men living in society, and the rights accruing to them. These are merely different modes of expressing the principle of justice, as it shall happen to be considered in its relation to the agent or the patient. Duty is the treatment I am bound to bestow upon others; right is the treatment I am entitled to expect from them. This will more fully appear in the sequel. First, of personal virtue and...
This article appears in Anarchy Archives with the permission of the author. From: Telos, no. 50 (Winter 1981-82). Telos Discussions: FINDING THE SUBJECT: NOTES ON WHITEBOOK AND "HABERMAS LTD." by Murray Bookchin "For a whole series of reasons, the reputation of Karl Marx has been reborn in a new form, the form of Marx as a sociologist. I believe that this is error: that Marx neither was -- nor in a very important sense intended to be -- a sociologist..." Donald G. Macrae Whitebook has known for years that I reject the very use of the word "modernity." So his attempt to dissociate me from it is quite gratuitous. He also knows that I reject it for reasons that have nothing to do with a desire to return to "premodernity." I also reject "so... (From : Anarchy Archives.)
Liberty and Taxation Excerpted from the book; Individual Liberty Selections From the Writings of Benjamin R. Tucker Vanguard Press, New York, 1926 Kraus Reprint Co., Millwood, NY, 1973. The power of taxation, being the most vital one to the State, naturally was a prominent subject in Liberty's discussions. Mr. F. W. Read, in London Jus, attacked the position of Anarchism on this point and was thus answered by Mr. Tucker: The idea that the voluntary taxationist objects to the State precisely because it does not rest on contract, and wishes to substitute contract for it, is strictly correct, and I am glad to see (for the first time, if my memory serves me) an opponent grasp it. But Mr. Read obscures his statement by his previous remark that the proposal of voluntary taxation is "the outcome of an idea...that the State is, or ough...
The Advisability of Violence. [Liberty, January 16, 1892.] To the Editor of Liberty:(21 ¶ 1) When you preach passive resistance, is it not precisely the same thing as what is commonly called nonresistance?(21 ¶ 2) When William Penn (or was it Fox?) refused to take off his hat for the king it was certainly passive resistance; but, as he made no attempt to punch the king’s head, it is accounted as quite compatible with the Friends’ nonresistance tenets. (21 ¶ 3) I do not think that any practical difference exists between passive resistanc...
From: Thoughts on Man, His Nature, Productions and Discoveries Interspersed with some Particulares Respecting the Author by William Godwin ESSAY II OF THE DISTRIBUTION OF TALENTS SECTION I PRESUMED DEARTH OF INTELLECTUAL POWER. --SCHOOLS FOR THE EDUCATION OF YOUTH CONSIDERED. --THE BOY AND THE MAN COMPARED. GO TO SECTION II One of the earliest judgments that is usually made by those whose attention is turned to the characters of men in the social state, is of the great inequality with which the gifts of the understanding are distributed among us. Go into a miscellaneous society; sit down at table with ten or twelve men; repair to a club where as many are assembled in an evening to relax from the toils of the day--it is almost proverbial, that one or two of these persons will perhaps be brilliant, and the rest "weary, stale, flat and unprofitable." Go into a numerous school--the case will be still m...